He sighed. “This is going to be hard. I think I’m going to have to back into it.”
“Okay,” I said. “Just tell me what’s going on.”
He held out his wrist. “Have I ever shown you this, Jennifer?”
It was a handsome Rolex watch. Of course I’d noticed it before, but he hadn’t said anything about the watch.
“Kind of fancy for you,” I said.
“It was a gift from a friend who used to live next door to me in Indiana. His name was John Kearney. John was a professor at Notre Dame. Very, very nice guy. Four kids, all girls. We used to go to football games together, play tennis once a week. When he was fifty-one, he went to his doctor about a little cough and came back with an X-ray showing a large spot on his lung,” Brendan said.
“He showed it to me. When I saw the film, I got John into the Mayo Clinic, where I had interned. I found him a top surgeon. Oncologist. Jennifer, six months later, John weighed a hundred and ten pounds. He couldn’t eat and couldn’t get out of bed. He was in constant pain and he wasn’t getting any better.”
Brendan looked into my eyes. I was touched by the depth of his sadness. I had been there myself; maybe I was still there.
“I was going to take John in for another radiation treatment, but he flat out refused. He said, ‘Please stop this, Brendan. I love you and I know you mean well. But I’ve had a good life. I have four beautiful daughters. I don’t want to be like this. Please let me go.’
“I apologized and I hugged him, and then both of us cried. I knew John was right. I couldn’t change what I’d already done, but the way I viewed the aggressive measures that doctors sometimes take, because wecan,changed forever.
“When he died, John left me his watch,” Brendan said. “What it means to me is ‘quality time,’ making the best of it. So when I read my own CAT scan at the beginning of the summer, I decided to do what’s best for me. I’m sorry about this. I can’t tell you how sorry. I don’t like melodrama very much, especially when it’s happening to me. I’m dying, Jennifer.”
Forty-one
I MAY HAVEblacked out for a second or two. I heard Brendan say “my own CAT scan” but I’m not completely sure I grasped what came after that. Then he said, and I heard this very clearly, “There’s nothing that can be done for me. Believe me, I’ve examined every possibility.”
I felt this incredible core of pain at the center of my chest, or maybe where my heartusedto be. I was dizzy and nauseous and I couldn’t really believe what I knew I’d just heard. Everything around me on the dock seemed fuzzy and unreal. The water I had my feet in, my own body, Brendan’s hand resting on mine. Suddenly I reached out and held him as tightly as I could. I kissed his cheek, the side of his forehead. I felt so incredibly sad, and empty.
“Tell me what’s wrong,” I finally said.
“Well, it’s called glioblastoma multiforme, Jennifer. Big name for a bad cancer that I have righthere.” He pointed his finger to the back and side of his head, just behind his left ear. He explained that he’d looked at his own case over and over, consulted experts from as far away as London, and kept arriving at the same unfortunate conclusion.
“The only treatment for this form of cancer is experimental, extremely radical,” he told me. “Surgery is a nightmare. The risk of paralysis is phenomenal. They probably can’t get all of the cells, anyway. The cancer usually keeps coming back, even with radiation and chemo.”
Tears were rolling down my face, and I felt hollow. “This isn’t true,” I whispered.
“I didn’t know how to tell you, Jennifer. I still don’t.” He pulled me into his arms, and I let Brendan hold me. When he spoke again, his voice was low and measured. “I’m so, so sorry, Jennifer.” He was soothingme. “I’m sorry.”
“Oh, Brendan,” I whispered. “How can this be happening?”
“A little quality time. That’s all I wanted,” he said in the softest whisper. “That’s why I decided to have a last summer up here. And then I found you again, Scout.”
Forty-two
BRENDAN AND Ihadn’t even been to bed together, and now maybe I understood why. It was one of the few things that I did understand at that point.
“I don’t want to be alone tonight,” I said against his cheek. “Is that okay?”
Then Brendan gave me that incandescent grin of his. “I didn’t want to be alone for the past thirty-four nights.”
“But who’s counting?”
“I am,” he said.
I took Brendan’s hand and kissed it. “Youwere.”
It seemed that we got from the dock to the bedroom without even touching the ground. We held on to each other inside the doorway, swaying together on the threshold. We kissed for a long moment, and I finally admitted to myself that I really loved Brendan’s kisses. Then we fumbled with our clothes and fell onto the bed in my room.
“I guess my sob story worked,” he cracked.
